In an effort to avoid any potential feed issues, we culled hard in 2018, with the intention of putting extra heifers to the bull in the years after. The plan was going OK, with only two empties in the heifers last year, which is the usual for most years.

I got a bit of a land when there was only a 50% success rate two weeks ago. You’d always be a bit on the nervous side at scanning time – it’s not the same level of nerves as TB testing, but there’s a bit of concern at the same time. Being the first year of a new bull doesn’t help and neither do repeated calls of ‘no calf’.

With those alarmbells running through my head, I was doing a mental post-mortem of the results while getting the next group ready. Dad was doing similar and thankfully, all went better with them. There are two rechecks, but those cows are on course for all being in calf.

Factors at play

Afterwards, we went through what differences there were compared to last year. The 2020 heifers got to grass earlier, but otherwise their treatment was identical.

The two factors that may have had an influence are the heat earlier in this summer and the fact that this bull took a different path to other young bulls we have retained for breeding.

Usually, any weanling bull picked out for breeding is fired out in a field for the winter to tough it out with the rest of the stock bulls.

Due to space constraints, this bull was housed with the rest of the young bulls and got similar treatment to them until February. He was taken out before feed levels were ramped up in any significant way.

There are similarities between him and the first bull Dad bought in the 90s. That bull put the first three or four cows in calf and then there was a gap of a month or so before he bulled any other cows. It has been said that feeding young breeding bulls can have a negative effect on fertility.

Positive side

After picking through the bones of the results, there was one positive to be had. Sales will be up for the end of the year.

Those extra heifers are on the way out this autumn and they’ll command a higher price than cows. In recent years, we have been putting more cows and heifers to the bull than we need to calve down, and let fertility call the shots. It makes the decisions on who stays or goes easier.

It helps not to have any favourites too. Our stand-out heifer calf from last year proved the saying that you can’t see fertility in cattle.

The system may sound harsh, but I’m a long way off from replicating what I saw on one American beef breeder’s property a few years ago.

With his cow numbers at their optimum for his land base, and not wanting to cull for the sake of it, he simply raised the bar for heifers entering the herd and ran them with bull for 24 days. His stock didn’t have access to the quality of feed we have in most of Ireland either.

The results of focusing on fertility are beginning to show with the in-calf rate of the cows. All that remains to be weighed from the 2020 calves are one of the heifer calf groups. I’ve been very pleased with the results so far, so hopefully they won’t disappoint.

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